


Slit Skirts (Die Songficenlied Part 3)

by se_parsons



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27539551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/se_parsons/pseuds/se_parsons
Summary: ORIGINALLY POSTED: 2 Jan 1999SPOILER WARNING: Post The Beginning, Triangle, Season 6, everything before that is fair game.RATING: NC-17, Put the kiddies to bed because people go there in this story.CLASSIFICATION: Story, Mulder/Fowley, Mulder/Scully, UST, Fowley, A and H if you're evil and sarcastic.  Don't be lookin' for romance from me, little bunnies.KEYWORDS: ANGST!!!!!  Rated 10 on the Kafka-meter.SUMMARY:  The next installment in what I've come to call Die Songficenlied.  It ain't quite the Ring, but it's good, not-very-clean fun.  You might want to read the first two "Just Good Friends" and "Cooling"as there are references within this one.SONG inspired it is to be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa_JM287Lhk
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	Slit Skirts (Die Songficenlied Part 3)

I was just thirty-four years old  
And I was still wandrin' in a haze  
I was wondrin' why everyone I met  
Seemed like they were lost in a maze  
I don't know why I thought I should have  
Some kind of divine right to the blues  
It's sympathy not tears people need  
When they're the front page sad news  


Scully didn't really know why he even bothered to listen to Fowley, let alone go places with her or trust her as far as he could throw the five-eight one hundred thirty-pound curvaceous brunette traitor. But, of course, if the visuals were distracting enough Mulder was known to ignore the content.

Fortunately she was immune to Fowley and her whole bag of tricks. But Scully was beginning to wonder if that was going to be enough. They were off the X-Files, but Mulder insisted on running off and pretending they weren't. And so help her, she ran after him like the obedient guard dog she was.

Except Diana Fowley was not something Scully had ever learned to guard against. And Mulder was not at all immune to the very kinds of persuasion Fowley was so obviously ready and willing to use.

You'd have thought he'd have learned something from Phoebe Green besides the swirly tongue thing, though Scully was actually rather glad he'd come away with that. But she really could have hoped he'd have managed a few lessons about betrayal, and the warning signs thereof. Scully's betrayal-meter was clanging at full-tilt, but Mulder was spending a lot of his time smiling benignly at Fowley across hallways and waving at her on the steps of the Hoover building.

Scully didn't like that at all.

It's not like she was proprietary over Mulder, or anything. Some things had happened between them, true, but they were nothing to build a future on or to raise expectations over. It's not like they were picking out china patterns, as Mulder had once jokingly suggested. It was just that they'd seemed to have acquired some sort of equilibrium after the events of the summer and their brief but momentous trip to Antarctica.

In fact, things had almost gotten back to normal. Normal for them, at least. A comfortable partnership uncomplicated by anything else. And while the complications had in some ways been very pleasant, ok, so they'd been way more than pleasant, and the Lord knew that Scully hadn't had anything remotely that pleasant for a really, really long time, but she was willing to give it up if it meant that no one had to feel guilty, or uncomfortable, or upset. And Scully wasn't feeling very upset about Mulder at the moment. At least not about him, himself. She was just worried about his notorious gullibility factor. He was always willing to believe the worst kind of claptrap. And Fowley's "I can save the X-Files for you, Fox" declarations were just exactly that. And in light of all her comments about how she'd returned to the States to "get back her old life" and to the things that were important to her, Scully had to admit she was worried.

Fowley had more than implied in front of Gibson Praise that Mulder was the main reason she'd returned. And the problem was, Mulder didn't seem to be the least suspicious as to her real motivations.

Scully could understand that someone could be in love with Mulder. He was a perfectly fine person, but she had a really hard time believing that Diana Fowley's motives were so pure. And Mulder didn't.

It was a problem. Because she didn't know how she could possibly warn him strongly enough without appearing shrewish, or possessive, or worse than that - jealous. Because she wasn't jealous, of course. It wasn't as though Mulder was her boyfriend or anything. Although Scully had a hard time with the word boyfriend for people of her age. And lover sounded so crass. Although, when she thought about it, what they'd been doing had been rather crass at that. She could still almost feel the lump on her head from the incident in her hallway. Not to mention- but she really didn't need to go there now. Not sitting in her new desk in the office bullpen, going over new reports of people who had ordered large quantities of fertilizer.

Domestic Terrorism unit. More like loser-bottom-of-the-barrel-fuck-your-career-forever unit. At least they could have been put on gun-tracking detail, and have gotten the opportunity to get into a shootout with white supremacists or something. Scully could have understood that at least. Guns were an obvious threat. Fertilizer was, well, mostly used to fertilize crops. Except for the odd high school genius who wanted to make a reputation for himself.

If Scully had to spend one more afternoon looking at one more big hole blown in a high school lawn, she thought she'd scream. Or slap the supercilious smirk off Mulder's face. Or, conversely, throw him down on the obligatory paint-covered high school rock and have her way with him out of sheer boredom and frustration.

And he wasn't taking it any better, of course. Spending all of his time painstakingly reconstructing the burned up X-Files from little scraps of carbon ash. He was going to go blind. And not for the Frohike reason, either.

She knew he was desperate. She understood how he felt about having his life's work snatched away like that. They'd both come so far, lost so much, to have fate take such an unkind twist. If she didn't know better, she would have thought something other than the conspirators behind the government was out to get them. Something more cosmic than aliens or funky DNA.

But the fact was she did know better. Things had seemed rather dark before she'd been able to understand and reconcile them. It had actually taken the moving hand of God and the deaths of angels to make her realize what was happening, but Scully had gotten a handle on herself and on the situation now. Until Fowley had started trying to pull the rug out from under her.

Fowley's sabotage just had to be personal. Fowley was perfectly polite on the surface, of course, but her proprietary actions toward Mulder immediately pitted them against one another when that was unnecessary. Scully could see how Fowley was viewing things. She was in full fight-for-my-man mode, and Scully didn't know what to do because- well, the fact of the matter was Mulder wasn't her man to fight for.

He was her ally. Her friend. Her partner. The person she could always depend on to come through for her and conversely to ditch her whenever he felt like it. The person who tried to protect her and to comfort her as much as he could. But he wasn't her man now, and he never had been. But he had been Fowley's. It was a long time ago, of course, but it still had been true. How was she supposed to combat a bond like that? A trust of that magnitude?

Scully knew that Mulder trusted her. But how did that compare to what he'd felt for Fowley? She had no way of knowing, so she watched his face when he spoke to Diana Fowley, she watched the way his body moved. And he seemed to be unbending, unlocking something inside himself that had been shut tight as long as Scully had known him. Something she'd never seen in six years.

And he was doing it all for Fowley.

It frightened her, because it meant the end of everything she'd come to count on as her life. Life with Mulder. It was a change she didn't want to see. But one that might make him happy. Or at least happier. She didn't think Mulder was capable of being completely happy. Too long living in a state of total paranoia and worry.

How could she be so selfish to do anything to jeopardize that? Even if he was just asking to be betrayed again. How could she weigh the happiness against its inevitable end? How could she truly judge Diana Fowley? She suspected her. But she didn't really know. She couldn't read her mind and she'd seen no real evidence to link her to those who wanted to end the X-Files. She'd even taken a bullet in defense of Gibson Praise.

But Scully couldn't help it. She distrusted Fowley. She just had to think harder, be more dispassionate, analyze what she was sensing and try to make the right decisions based on logic and evidence, not on her own muddled feelings. She couldn't protect Mulder in this. She could support him, but not protect him.

He had to make his own decisions.

But she would stand by him no matter what he decided. She knew she owed him that much as well, and she would lend a sympathetic ear, or a shoulder to cry on or whatever it was he felt he needed when the time came. Just as she was doing now with the loss of the X-Files, even if he seemed to want to share that grief more with Diana Fowley than with her.

She would not fail him and compete with that woman. She would do whatever she could to make it easier for him to decide what he wanted to do. She would.

The incense burned away  
And the stench began to rise  
Lovers now estranged,  
Avoided catching each other's eyes  
And girls who lost their children  
Cursed the men who fit the coil  
And men not fit for marriage  
Took their refuge in the oil  
No one respects the flame  
Quite like the fool who's badly burned  
From all this you'd imagine  
That there must be something learned

Fowley could feel the blue eyes boring into the back of her skull like white hot irons from a medieval torture device. It was Dana Scully, of course, glaring at her across the cafeteria again. Probably because Fox had thrown an unknowing smile her way as he'd sat down at the table across from his partner and spread their useless fertilizer reports in front of her.

Scully was mad at him, you could tell. You could see it in the hardness in her face, the glitter in the icy blue eyes. She opened her mouth and said something sharply, and his head jerked up for an instant and then his gaze slid off sideways somewhere back to the papers on the tabletop.

He did a lot of that, Fowley noticed. Watching Scully when she didn't know. Deliberately avoiding her gaze when she was looking at him. There was strain there. And Fowley might be able to use that strain to her advantage if she could get Mulder's head out of the ash that had been the X-Files for just a few minutes. But right now, his partner and other papers were demanding Fox's attention.

The Poo Poo reports. That's what the other agents were calling them behind Mulder's back. It was amazing to discover just how many people in the FBI despised Fox Mulder and by association, his partner. It was easy to find people to go along with their punishment and to heap abuse on top of the humiliation of having their division snatched away from them.

That's what you got for being too brilliant, Diana supposed. First his notoriously successful career at VCS, then his founding and running his own division through the greatest of adversity, and finally there was the astoundingly high solution record he and Scully had maintained despite the oddity of the cases. Their capture of Robert Patrick Modell, the solution of the Paper Hearts case, the uncovering of large numbers of poisonings and abductions and murders among the general public. And on top of being a brilliant FBI agent, he was an incredibly handsome man. That always irked people on the best of days. Combined with brilliant it made Fox Mulder a target for everyone who ever felt inadequate in their own lives.

If only they knew.

If only they knew him like she did. The pain, the insecurity, the genuine empathy he felt for everyone he met. It was what had first made her love him, the supreme vulnerability in someone so utterly competent. If people could just see how he was inside, she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hurt him then. Even Scully didn't want to hurt him, and she was the hardest woman Diana Fowley had ever seen.

Fowley often wondered if Scully had ever had an emotion that wasn't negative in her entire life. She was good-looking enough when she wasn't making a sour expression on her face, but she knew that Fox wasn't sleeping with her. And he would have been if she was even slightly sympathetic even though she was absolutely the opposite of his usual type. Diana could tell, she'd been watching them very very carefully. But there were none of the tell-tale signs of physical intimacy there, and Fowley knew exactly what she was looking for in that department.

Of course he touched Scully too much, but that was just how he was. He touched everyone too much when he knew them well enough. The psychologist in Fowley knew it had a lot to do with the rejection he'd experienced in his early life. He unconsciously reached out to fill the void. But the way he touched Scully was caring but respectful, not the intimate and teasing way he touched a lover. Diana knew those touches from both her own experience and from observing him with several women he'd had brief liaisons with before her. They were the touches that spoke of security, of confidence in his relationship with his lover. She saw none of that in what went on with Fox's current partner.

No, he couldn't be in love with Dana Scully, though Diana was certain that he did love her. She just couldn't quantify how. And it plagued her more than it should. Diana didn't really like uncertainty, and she especially didn't like to see it in someone she knew well, like Fox Mulder. Mulder and Scully were close, it was true, you could see it in the way they bent their heads together over the papers they were working on, in the way he snuck those glances as she talked. But Diana couldn't really be certain what it was.

Scully was a tiny thing. Perhaps he unconsciously saw her as a surrogate for the lost Samantha. They'd both been abducted. It seemed logical, at least. But the workings of Fox Mulder's labyrinthine mind were seldom logical. He was driven more by his passions, and controlled by his intellect. And love was a place where passion ruled him, Diana knew that from experience. It had almost been frightening, that passion. Fowley had feared being burned by it. It had made leaving him easier in the end.

Not that it had been at all easy.

But now she was back. And she had no intention of going anywhere again soon. And she had the X-Files, which were a useful bargaining chip in the game she was playing, though they weren't something she wanted to use against Fox. That would be wrong.

But they did give her a valuable way back in. And it was one she  
intended to use to its fullest potential.

She'd just make sure she dropped him the hints when Scully wasn't there to mess things up. After she got some time with him alone, it would all be easy enough. It was easy to forget about your sister when you were with your lover, after all?

She watched Mulder for a while across the room, ignoring whatever Jeffrey was blathering on about. Some departmental ass-kissing no doubt. She watched the way he moved, and his long hands as they shuffled through the papers on the tabletop. She wanted those hands on her again that very minute, but she could wait a little while longer, she supposed, though she didn't have to like it. The only thing about them that didn't make her happy was when he reached out his left one and placed it lightly on the back of Scully's, calling her attention to something in the Poo Poo report in front of him.

Whatever it was made her roll her eyes and look even more disgusted if such a thing was possible.

She looked most unattractive that way. Diana almost wished that the old wives tale was true. Do that too much and your face will freeze that way. But then, Scully's already had.

No, it wasn't even going to be hard. Scully and her tepid relationship with Mulder was not really much to compete with. And it was a damned shame because a worthy opponent made you hone your own skills in really remarkable ways. Ah, well. Diana had had enough challenges in the past few years. She wasn't as young as she used to be, and it was time to settle down with a good man she could understand and could control when it was necessary. Mulder was both. She'd proven that often enough in the past.

And the fact that he was good to look at and fabulous in the sack was one hell of an added incentive.

She'd start that very day. 

Slit skirts, Jeannie never wears those slit skirts  
And I don't ever wear no ripped shirts  
Can't pretend that growing older never hurts  
Knee pants Jeannie never wears no knee pants  
Have to get so drunk to try a new dance  
So afraid of every new romance

Mulder felt vaguely guilty as he walked with Diana into the restaurant. It was the first time he'd gone out to eat with a woman other than Scully in what seemed like forever. It was odd to look beside him in the car and see someone nearly as tall as himself with long hair, rather than his small, short-haired partner. But this was Diana, he told himself. And so it was all right. She wanted to talk about the X-Files. To ask his advice, to find out what she'd missed for the past six and a half years. It was important.

And the fact of the matter was, Mulder was glad to see her. He was glad to drop back into the easy familiarity of someone who really knew him. Someone who'd seen him at his worst and at his best as well. Someone who had seen it and who had really shared it in a way that Scully never had allowed.

Scully followed him wherever he went, but Diana went there with him. That was the difference.

And she looked fabulous. They'd both gone home and changed after work and now she was dressed in a gorgeous silk Chinese dress, black, with red embroidery, the pattern understated and elegant like the rest of her. But also like the rest of her, daring in the way that it clung tightly to her voluptuous body and in the slit that parted with each step to reveal the expanse of creamy thigh. Diana looked so free, so happy, so vibrant, and he felt his eyes drawn back to her again and again and the tantalizing way the dress moved with her every step.

Diana had always had terrific legs. Long and perfect with just the right combination of muscle and softness in the curves of her thighs. He remembered well just what those legs felt like wrapped around him. And he always liked the way heads turned in the room when they walked in together, a tall dark couple with attention only for each other. The host seated them, and they perused the menus in silence for a while. But it was an easy silence, like with Scully. Here was another person he didn't feel he had to entertain. He could be himself and be accepted.

They ordered food and a nice bottle of red wine, French, because Mulder had gotten to be something of a European wine snob while at Oxford and Diana had been stationed there for the past six years, and then made small talk for a while about the restaurant and the evening.

There was a spectacular sunset going on, touching the buildings around the restaurant with rose and golden hues. And Diana appreciated it. She even compared it to other things. Scully would have just looked at it and muttered something about air pollution refracting light.

He hadn't felt this relaxed in a good, long time. No tension. No expectations. No longing. No guilt. It felt good. No, better than good. It felt wonderful. Mulder smiled, and Diana smiled back over the rim of her wine glass, her deep brown eyes sparkling in their warm depths.

The waiter came and went with their order, and they continued to converse pleasantly about nothing at all. Diana's new condo, her benign description of Spender as an "eager beaver" who just wanted to please his superiors instead of the backstabbing toady Mulder knew he was, good places to eat in Georgetown, because that's where she'd moved. Nothing important, nothing stressful or earth-shattering. It was great.

The waiter came and brought them a terrific dinner. Hers some sort of seafood alfredo pasta thing and his a steak stuffed with mushrooms that briefly made him fear he was turning into his father, until he tasted it and forgot to worry. They ate comfortably, companionably. It was like old times.

They finished their meals at the same time. In sync as always. Diana daintily wiped her mouth on her napkin and took another sip of wine. Then she looked into her glass for a moment and her face became serious for the first time that night.

"So, Fox," she began. "How have you been?"

"What do you mean?" he laughed, wondering what the serious face was for, seeing that was the only question. "You know exactly how I've been. You've been right there to watch, along with the rest of the FBI."

"No, that's not what I mean," she said, setting the glass down and looking at him searchingly. "I mean how have YOU been. All that foolishness with Scully and running off to the Antarctic, losing the X-Files, jeopardizing the career you've spent the best part of your life building. That's got to have taken its toll. I don't think I've ever seen you so tired, Fox. I saw it in you the moment I got back. Like you were on your last nerve."

"Please don't try to psychoanalyze me Diana," Mulder said, losing some of his enjoyment. "I thought we were here to talk about the X-Files, not my deepest, darkest feelings."

"Your deepest, darkest feelings are all tied up with the X-Files and we both know it, Fox," she said. "They're everything you care about all rolled into one. Your sister, finding the truth, solving mysteries that need solving, exposing corruption, and this bizarre obsession you seem to have developed with your partner. Has she become a symbol for you, Fox? Like Joan of Arc, perhaps? St. Scully, Martyr of the X-Files?"

"Leave Scully out of it, Diana," Mulder said warningly.

"I can't," Fowley replied. "You've let her take so much control over your life. I can't talk to you about you without talking about her. Can't you see it, Fox? Can't you see it, really?"

Like he always did when listening to someone's argument, Mulder tried to place himself in Diana's position. How would he view his situation if he was an outsider looking in? How would he see his relationship with Scully, knowing only what Diana knew, and without the benefit of six years of working together. Without the emotions created by long hours side by side, dangers faced together, and the connection born of pain shared and overcome.

"You just don't understand, Diana," Mulder said. "You couldn't. You've been gone. And you don't know her like I do. She's not what you imagine."

"No? Isn't she?" Diana said sharply. "What do you think I imagine, Fox?"

"All you can see is the face she puts out professionally, the calm, cool, Agent Scully she wants everyone to believe she is. The person she wants to believe she is. That's all you know," Mulder began.

"Do you know how sick that sounds, Fox?" Diana interrupted. 'No one really understands her but me.' You sound like an abused spouse. 'I know he hits me, but, I deserve it.' 'I know he's cruel, but no one really understands him like I do. He needs me.' Surely you see what you're doing here? Rationalizing her coldness, explaining away her abuse of you and your ideas, her belittling everything you've tried to achieve."

"But she doesn't do that, Diana," Mulder argued. "She supports me. She's been my greatest asset all these years, making me work harder to find tangible proof. Helping me gather the scientific evidence I need to prove what I know to be fact. My god, Diana, she lied for me under oath. And not like the President, either. She went to jail for me. She's saved my life again and again and stood by me through more things than you can ever imagine. The only thing I could compare it to, and I'm not sure the comparison is a fair one because I've never been in a war, but Scully's like the buddy in the trench with you. The one you count on to back you up. The one you trust with more than your life. You don't even have to think about them because you know they'll do anything to protect you, including sacrifice themselves to save your ass. That's what Scully is to me. And more than that, she's..."

"According to your report, she saw the spaceship rise from the Antarctic ice field at the same time you did," Diana interrupted his heroic descriptions of his partner once more. "Why does she deny it, then?"

"I... I don't know," Mulder said. "I guess she doesn't trust herself enough. She doesn't trust the validity of experience without the tangible proof. Eyewitness accounts aren't good enough. She's a forensic pathologist, for Heaven's sake. She wants the scientific fact."

"Or she just doesn't want to look like a crackpot," Diana told him. "Scully has always been very, very careful to maintain her own credibility. While she works with you, she's remained the skeptic. The little girl with the brilliant career who threw it down the toilet to work with the FBI crank. She knows better than to be skeptical now. She believes, but she won't say it because she doesn't want to jeopardize herself further. Sure, she'll lie for you if it means your life, she'll do what she can to protect you if it's just physical danger, but if it harms her reputation? You just watch how fast she runs the other direction. It's only a matter of time."

"You're wrong," Mulder said. "She's the one Kersh fined for our trip to Arizona, not me."

"Really?" Diana said. "And who did he really blame? I said she'd take hits for you, Mulder. But only certain kinds. And you don't deserve a partner who's unwilling to go all the way with you. In everything."

"Scully supports me," Mulder said lamely.

"But she doesn't go with you, does she?" Diana said. "Even when she knows she should. She just can't give up her superior position. Her high and mighty scientific evidence, even when the experience is right there in front of her. She wants to be able to lord it over you, Mulder. She won't make that last leap of commitment."

Mulder thought about what Diana was saying, but not in reference to their working relationship.

It had only been a short time ago, after all, that he'd finally managed to blurt it out. In a hospital room after he'd come back from the Bermuda Triangle. Those three words that you're always told people long to hear, "I love you." And Scully had reacted like he'd just said, "Hey, look, it's Elvis," in the middle of a Burger King in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

He'd made the commitment, he'd declared himself in a fairly plain and not easy to misunderstand way. At a time when sex couldn't be an excuse or a complication. And she'd blown him off. She'd blown him off and had walked right out of the room after she'd done it.

He'd been too happy to see her, to be alive, to be angry at the time. But maybe Diana had a point. Maybe he should have been angry. Scully was pretty obviously not taking him seriously. And not just about work, but personally. Like he was a joke there as well. And that was something he really didn't deserve.

He might not be the best man in the world. He might not even be a good man. He might even be a nerdy doofus with a porn habit and geeks for friends, but he tried hard, and he didn't abuse Scully. He respected her. He protected her. He loved her in ways he still hadn't figured out himself yet, and she treated him like he was inconsequential. Like he was the boy next door with his first junior high crush. Like whatever he felt, it couldn't be serious. Like he didn't matter.

Mulder looked at his silverware. He didn't want to look at what Diana had shown him. He didn't want to go there, but it was so plain when you just stacked the facts up a little differently. The same things, only in different order. His way they meant, Scully was afraid, waiting until she could overcome her fears and reach out to him. Diana's, Scully just didn't care. Diana's way was his own worst fears confirmed. And from an outside observer. Someone who didn't know them, but who watched.

He knew he could trust Diana's powers of observation. He'd counted on them often in the past. She was insightful and imaginative. She could put herself in another's place and see things from their perspective. It was a gift she had, like his own. Was this really how it looked from the outside? Was this how they looked? Or worse, was this how they were?

"Diana," he said in a choked voice, and then stopped.

Fowley reached out and took his hand firmly in her own across the white tablecloth.

"It's all right, Fox," she said. "I know it hurts. I know it's hard to see things from another perspective when you've been so close to it for so long. But she treats you so badly. And I just.... I just can't stand watching it. Watching her hurt you. Watching her treat you as if you were nothing. Making it all be about her."

"She says I think it's all about me," Mulder confessed. And it felt like confession, too, or betrayal. He wasn't really sure, which. He never spoke of Scully to anyone.

"She would," Diana said, squeezing his hand more tightly. Her look grew in intensity, her eyes glittering and appearing almost black in the candlelight, as it had finally grown dark outside. "But there are other people who wouldn't say that, Fox. Other people who would appreciate you. Who would want you. Would love you for what you are, all that you are, not try to turn you into something else, their scapegoat for whatever tragedy they have in their lives. Someone like me, Fox. Couldn't you give me a chance?"

There it was then, she wanted him back. He'd thought he was imagining it, when she held his hand before she'd been shot, while they were all supposed to be protecting Gibson Praise.

"Diana, I- I don't know what to say," Mulder told her. "I hadn't really thought about it. I mean, I was glad that you'd come back. I'm glad that the X-Files went to you if they won't let Scully and me have them. I know you care about the work. But I just hadn't thought that after all this time you'd still care about me, too."

"Why not, Fox?" she asked. "What's so hard to believe about that?"

"Well, I-" Mulder began. "It's just that I-. Well, I've never really been good at the relationship thing, Diana. You know that. My God, you should know it better than anyone. And then, when you just dropped off the face of the earth like that, I thought- well, I thought it was just like the other times I'd let someone really get to know me. 'Familiarity breeds contempt,' right?"

"Did you ever think that maybe the reason I didn't contact you was that it would hurt too much?" Diana asked him. "That I hoped every day that you might try to find me, so that I could hear your voice across the phone line, at least. But I should have known you wouldn't. I should have known you'd respect my privacy too much to do that, even if I wanted you to."

Diana reached across the table and took Fox's other hand.

"But I'm here now, Fox," she said, her voice dropping lower and becoming more intimate. "And I'm not going anywhere. And even though you didn't know I wanted you to reach out to me, I have the strength to reach out to you. I have the strength to try again. I'm not saying we pick up where we left off. That wouldn't be right. We're different people now. Six years changes things, but it doesn't change things as important as what we felt for each other. I think that we can feel it again, if we only try just a little."

The waiter arrived with the dessert tray at just that moment, in the way waiters have of gauging the most inappropriate time to interrupt any conversation.

They got some ices and ate slowly and quietly, but both were seriously contemplating what had been said.

And then they were done eating.

And then they were driving back to his apartment.

And then they were kissing.

And then more than that.

And it wasn't really until Diana's hot mouth was coming down on his cock that Mulder really realized what was going on. That he was doing it. He was letting her in. That he was reacting in all the right ways. That he was enjoying it.

That it wasn't Scully.

That it wasn't right.

It should have been good, but it wasn't. He'd been with Diana before. He knew her. He cared for her. It wasn't meaningless, but it wasn't meaningful, either. At least not the way he was used to. It wasn't filled with the knowledge of them. Of what they were to each other.

Oh, Diana meant something to him. She was his friend. His supporter. Someone with valid ideas and who would listen to his and consider them thoroughly. A hell of a good lay. She was comforting. She was more than interested in him. It was flattering. It just wasn't what he wanted.

The sex was fine. It always was. Diana had an amazing body, all soft curves and long limbs. It was easy enough to get off. It was easy to feel the connection to have all the proper physiological reactions. But it wasn't enough any more. Not for him.

He felt like Dorothy must have felt after she came home from Oz. There's no place like home, all right. But there's no one there as wonderful as the Tinman or the Scarecrow, or even the Wicked Witch of the West. It's all black and white by comparison. No bright cellophane flowers, no yellow brick road, no blue flying monkeys, no red ruby slippers or red Scully hair. And wrapping his hand in Diana's coarse, thick, dark locks was like grabbing onto the tail of a fine thoroughbred when what you really wanted was the silken pelt of a chinchilla. It was all wrong.

But he did it anyway.

It seemed to please Diana. And as for the rest of it- as for how he felt-.it didn't really matter at the moment.

And he just didn't think about it.

Slit skirts, slit skirts, Jeannie isn't wearing those  
Slit skirts, slit skirts, she wouldn't dare in those  
Slit skirts, slit skirts, won't be seen dead in those slit skirts  
Romance, romance, why aren't we thinking up romance?  
Why can't we drink it up, true heart romance  
Just need a brief new romance

It was late Friday afternoon and Diana had come to an important decision. She wasn't going to let Scully win. She was not going to allow her to drag Fox down. Fox meant too much to Diana, and she thought he meant a good deal less to Scully. Though, with Special Agent Scully's known chilly demeanor, it was extremely difficult to tell.

But Diana knew that she wasn't like that. She was warm. She knew Fox. She knew what he needed when he was working too hard. She knew how to support him, no matter what the job was. She was professional enough to separate her work from her life. At least that's what she kept telling herself.

And her life had been empty since she'd gone to Europe. She hadn't realized how much she'd miss him. How much his mere presence had meant to her, even when he was being pathetic or needy or so enthusiastic she just felt like slapping him and telling him to get a grip.

There had been other lovers, of course. She wasn't one to go without. But the fact that Fox had since her departure was significant. Scully might tell herself it was because of her, but Diana knew better. That cold little creature wasn't worth that kind of sexual loyalty. Fox's behavior had to have been mouring for the loss of their relationship. It could be the only explanation. The only one that made any sense, anyway. He'd missed her. He loved her.

They had a chance to rebuild what they'd had. Scully could go hang. If Diana could just convince Fox to stop trying to meddle where he had been forbidden, for just a while. He still had a chance of being reassigned to the X-Files division. If he could just be persuaded to give up his partner. They'd never be able to both come back. But he was the founder of the X-Files, the co-founder anyway, and the one who had poured his life into them. A case could be made for that. If only someone could become the scapegoat.

There was a little, red-haired, sharp-tongued one bleating right there in front of them waiting to be blamed, and her name was Dana Scully.

Scully had goaded him to his excesses, hadn't she? Wasn't she the reason he'd gone to Antarctica? Wasn't she the reason he'd violated DOD security time and again? She and her Abduction with a capital A? If it hadn't been for Scully and her problems, Mulder wouldn't be in the predicament he was in. He wouldn't have been taken off the X-Files. She was the cause of the whole thing.

And it was Diana's job to make him see that. To bring him back in from the cold. Scully's cold, little realm of folly and disgrace.

And she would. She just had to make him see how he'd ruined his life for someone who not only couldn't understand him, but couldn't appreciate the sacrifices he'd made for her. She wasn't even grateful. That's what really irked Diana. Dana Scully had no fucking idea how much Fox cared for her at all. And Diana wasn't stupid enough to imagine that he didn't. Fox was like that. He was caring. He cared for all sorts of people who didn't deserve it. Dana Scully was one of them.

Diana knew exactly what he'd gone through when Scully had had cancer. She could see him herself, crying somewhere alone, in agony, where Scully couldn't see. Blaming himself, when it had nothing at all to do with him, really. It couldn't have had anything to do with him. Scully was just another body. Convenient, yes, but a body just like any of the other Abductees. She wasn't special. She wasn't significant. Just genetic material like anyone else.

But he wouldn't have seen it that way. He would have seen it as punishment. For him, for meddling where he shouldn't have.

But Diana could make him understand all that. She would make him realize what was really going on. How Scully had used him even if she hadn't planned to, for while Diana knew Scully's martyrdom was really self-aggrandizement more than anything, she didn't think Scully actually plotted against people. It wasn't part of the martyr mentality. Martyrs had to be assured they were good, that they were in the right, that they were persecuted. Scully was acted upon, she didn't act. She relied on people like Fox Mulder to be her supporter and her persecutor all at once. She was a parasite, a lamprey feeding off his ever-moving shark, sucking his lifeblood until she drained him down to the same soulless shell she was herself.

Diana waited where she was until Scully came out of the lab, carrying the analysis of the latest fertilizer bomb uncovered in the Poo Poo reports. Diana smiled, but it was really one lioness bearing its teeth to the other, a formal greeting of mutual hostility. The battle for dominance within the pride had begun, and after last night, Diana knew she had the killing blow, the bite to the jugular. Mulder had left its imprint on the skin of her neck the night before as he came into her body. All she had to do was to show it to the encroaching female, and her rights would be firmly established, by the leader of the pride, himself.

"Agent Scully, could I have a word with you for a moment?" she asked, as Scully seemed prepared to simply walk by her as if she were so much lab furniture.

Scully stopped, and looked up from the report she was carrying.

"Yes, Agent Fowley," she said, giving Diana the same kind of look the high school principal gives the girl caught smoking again behind the gym.

Though Diana was a good six inches taller than Scully, the look made her feel small. She hated people who could make her feel like that, and the look made her totally forget her idea of attempting to break it to Scully gently, out of deference to Fox and his relationship with this unworthy little troll. Somewhere along the line Diana had begun to hate her and her hold on Fox. Well, she might as well just go with it, then.

"There are a few developments regarding the X-Files that I think you ought to be made aware of," Fowley began without preliminary, and watched as Scully's eyes widened in surprise and her face lost some of its supercilious disdain. Scully looked at her expectantly.

"As you know, I've been working diligently to maintain the integrity of the work that Agent Mulder has done on the X-Files over the time since I've been away," Diana continued and watched the open look on Scully's face vanish as some steely door shut itself behind her cold, blue eyes. "I've gone over what remains of the work that's been done, looked at what Fox has been able to reconstruct, and have reported to my superiors on the validity of what has been accomplished - the real truths uncovered, the madmen stopped, the explanations for the unexplained. After careful consideration, it seems that they agree with my assessment of the work, itself. It's only the more recent and continuing... extravagances and abuses of privilege and funding along with a certain disregard of legal points of investigative procedure that they continue to find objectionable.

"After careful reconstruction of the events leading up to these abuses, it wasn't terribly difficult to see that there was one single factor present in every case. Each time Fox seriously disregarded procedure and protocol or ran up huge expense accounts it was because he was actively engaged in finding out more about your supposed "abduction". The only thing that anyone really knows about that experience, despite all of the nonsense relating to it, is that you were taken from your home by the madman Duane Barry, disappeared for a period of five months, and then were abandoned at a hospital here in D.C. near death. Exactly the same things we all knew five years ago at the time of the events concerned.

"It seems in light of that, that the problem with the X-Files division lies not with Fox, but with you, Agent Scully."

Fowley watched her closely, waiting for reaction. The only thing she saw was more doors slamming shut behind Scully's blue eyes. She was shutting down. Good. It made it so much easier for everyone, then.

"My superiors have made it possible for me to actively work toward Agent Mulder's reinstatement as a member of the X-Files investigative team. While no one is discounting the fine work you've done as a pathologist, because it has been meticulous and in some ways exemplary, your continued involvement with Fox and his obsession with discovering what happened to you is a definite liability for both of your careers.

"I can't order you, but I can ask you," Diana sighed, Scully's demeanor had become cold enough to freeze hell over, though if you followed Dante you knew that it already was. "If you care for Fox at all. If you give a damn about him, and I don't know that you do... Give him his life back. You've sucked him dry for six years already. Let him get back to the work, at least, seeing you can't give him back the six years he's wasted chasing after you and your phantom abductors. Help me give him back the X-Files, they mean everything to him."

"And what's your role in all of this, after I've stepped aside for the sake of Mulder's career?" Scully said, her voice even colder than her stony face.

"The same role it's always been," Diana replied. "To help him, to support him in his mission to find the truth. To be there with him to give him the kind of strength he needs to do what he has to do, instead of tearing him down and making him doubt himself. To go with him wherever he needs to go, and help him find his way back safe again. To protect him, to take care of him, to love him like he deserves to be loved, and to show him that I know what he's worth. That's my role Agent Scully, it's the role I played before you came and it's the one I'm playing now.

"I went away, but as soon as I was gone I knew it had been a terrible mistake. I've worked hard to get back here, back to him, and to the things that matter. I've earned my place in the X-Files and at Fox's side in a way that you never could understand because you just don't have the humanity to understand him.

"I've watched you, I know what you are. I've seen how you manipulate him, use his good nature and his good qualities to turn you into the Saint you want to be. I think Gibson Praise saw through you, too, he'd obviously told you something you didn't want to hear that night I was shot. I could tell by the look on your face when I came in the door. I could tell by the way that you rushed out of the room in panic. He saw right into your heart and knew you for the cold, little monster you are. But it doesn't take Gibson Praise to see it.

"I'm asking you now, take your talons out of Fox," Diana said, crossing her arms and looking darkly at the little red-haired troll in front of her. "He certainly doesn't need you, and soon I think we'll all find that he doesn't even miss you any more. Not when he sees you for the liability you are."

"And you mean to show him that?" Scully said quietly.

"I think I already have shown him some of it. Enough to bring him back to his senses at least part of the way. Enough to remind him what real love feels like instead of this foolish chivalric nonsense you've encouraged."

Diana tossed her head, flinging her long dark hair back over her shoulder.

Scully looked at Diana's neck. Then she looked again. Diana smiled coolly.

"Yes, it's what it looks like, Agent Scully. Fox put it there last night while we were making love," Diana told her. "Though I find it rather surprising that you'd recognize a love mark when you saw one. Word's gotten around about that little debacle with that Rob guy, the bone man? It seems he's called that for more than the obvious reason. Except for you. Word has it he says he's never seen anyone so cold in his life. "Dana Scully could freeze the balls off a horny gorilla in an equatorial jungle," is the quote, I believe.

"Only Fox would have the patience to put up with someone like that for any length of time. It's because he's such an idealist, I suppose. Wants to put people up on pedestals. You and I both know better. We're realists, each in our own way.

"But if you feel anything for him at all, if there's any humanity inside that little, cold heart of yours, and I can't believe that even you could fail to recognize what he's worth, then the only decent thing for you to do is step aside. Let him go. Let him get on with his life with someone who can love him like he ought to be loved.

Don't hang onto him out of selfishness, or to spite me, or to prove that you can. Because he's loyal and he'll never desert you if he thinks you want him. He's so used to nobody wanting him.

"But the fact is that both you and I know that you don't want him. Or, at least, you don't want him enough. Because if you did, I never would have been where I was last night."

"If I love him, set him free?" Scully said sarcastically, a dangerous glitter in the depths of her icy eyes.

"It just goes to prove what I'm saying about the kind of person you are, if you can answer me like that," Diana said sadly. "But think about it carefully. Think about Fox. You can make or break him, here. Do you really want to destroy him? Does he deserve that? Just think about it."

Diana walked away, leaving Scully where she was, holding the pathology of the fertilizer tightly in one stubby hand.

Let me tell you some more about myself  
You know I'm sitting at home just now  
The big events of the day are passed  
And the late TV shows are comin' round  
I'm number one on the home team  
But I still feel unfulfilled  
A silent voice in her broken heart  
Complains that I'm unskilled.

"Mulder, what are you going to do?"

Mulder scrambled to an upright position, fumbling for his gun. But it was only Scully, closing the door behind her. He hadn't even heard her come in.

It was 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and she was in his apartment.

"About what?" he asked, even though he knew what she meant.

"About Fowley," she told him, standing still just inside the door, in the darkness.

"What about her, Scully?"

"You don't have to lie to me," Scully told him. "I'm not your mother. I'm not here to bust you. I just want to know what you're going to do, that's all. So I know how to treat her."

"What are you talking about, Scully?" he asked, getting up from the couch to approach her.

"I had a talk with Agent Fowley today, Mulder," Scully said, her voice very controlled. The only light in his apartment was thrown by the fish tank and the tv that had the sound turned off. He couldn't see Scully's face. "I don't like to talk to people about private conversations but I think that in this case it's important that I know what's really going on. I don't know Fowley very well, and I do know you. So I'd like to hear it from you, too."

"You'd like to hear what?" Mulder asked, quailing inwardly. He knew he shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't have weakened. But it seemed like no matter what he did Scully would never believe how he felt about her. That it was real. He was certain by now, that he could cut out his heart and show it to her, bleeding on his sleeve and she still wouldn't really believe him. And Fowley knew how he felt, she understood. She even understood his reluctance to begin again, though she didn't know the reason why. But if Scully was there, in his apartment, and they were having this conversation, maybe she did.

"That- that the two of you- you've."

God, it was hard for her. Mulder couldn't help himself, he reached out and put his hand on Scully's upper arm, to support her in saying the thing that was hard. She was trembling.

"That you've gotten back together. That you're l- that you've resumed your former relationship. That she's going to try to get you reassigned to the X-Files. That I ought to not get in your way."

"She didn't say that," Mulder said, tightening his hand on Scully's arm.

"Yes, she did, Mulder. It's a direct quote," Scully told him. "I- I just want to know that you've decided. That it's what you want and not just what she wants. I don't mean about the X-Files of course, I know that you want them back. I want them back, too. But not at the cost of preventing you from having them."

"Scully-"

"Hear me out, please, Mulder," she said, trying to pull away, but he only put his hand on her other arm and held her there, facing him, though she still refused to look up at him, hiding her face in the room's shadows. "I told you before that I was assigned to you to hold you back. And that's the truth. It's as true as anything we've been trying to uncover for the past six years. I might not have played along the way they expected when they sent me to you, but because of who and what I am, I do act as a brake on you. A damper on your enthusiasm, and while it works out for the best sometimes-."

"All the time, Scully. All the time," he said.

"Please, let me finish. While my expertise can help you, and while I might force you to find every shred of evidence to support your work, it's true that I don't believe the way that you do. I don't believe the way that Fowley does. I see that now. I- I've been thinking about this a lot, Mulder, and-"

"And so you're going to try to leave me again," he told her, giving her the smallest of shakes just to show he was really serious. "Every time it gets hard. Every time they throw something at us, you want to leave. You always complain about the way I "ditch" you when things get dangerous. But I'd never leave you Scully, not really. Yet here you are, at two o'clock in the morning, after having thought about it "a lot" ready to walk out on me. Again. It's just so easy for you, isn't it? To just walk away. Well, if you walk out on me, Scully, that will be your choice. I'll never throw you away like that."

"Maybe you should, Mulder," she said, and he realized that she was crying, that she had been since she'd come in, but in typical Scully fashion she'd done it silently, and tried to make it so he wouldn't see. Hiding her own pain to make it easier for him. Just like she had when she'd been dying. Just like she had when she'd lost her baby. Just like she did every time she was broken in ways there was no repairing.

"Never," he said and pulled her into his arms, kissing her deeply, tasting the salt of her silent tears. And she felt right in his arms. Right in ways that Diana, for all that he cared for her, could never feel. Right simply because she was Scully. Because she was The One.

Mulder had always told himself that there were really infinite numbers of people who were compatible in the world. That you only had to find one whose idiosyncrasies matched up with yours to find one that you could happily spend a lifetime with. And that, if you grew apart, or it ultimately didn't work out, someone else with compatible idiosyncrasies would do just as well. Was just as worthy of your affection.

But he was so wrong.

Here was Dana Scully, the last person on earth he would have chosen for himself. The person who had the least amount of compatible idiosyncrasies. And the only woman he'd ever loved to the point of irrationality. To the point of doing violence to some random stranger because he wasn't responding quickly enough to her needs. To the point of desiring his own death because he feared hers.

He loved her so much he couldn't bring himself to confess the extent of it. "I love you" was totally inadequate. He thought that it should shine from his forehead like the mark of Cain. That it should be obvious to even the casual observer. Yet, Scully, herself, didn't understand. He could kiss her. He could touch her. He could bring her to the heights of sexual union, and yet he couldn't convince her that she was loved. That she was his universe and that the mere knowledge that she existed in the world could be enough to sustain him for a lifetime.

And he was so desperately afraid that now that would be the only thing he had to live on. When he'd harbored the hope of so much more for so long.

He moved his lips from hers to her throat, unbuttoning the fastenings of her trenchcoat as he did so. He wouldn't let it end like this. He couldn't just let her walk away without even trying to show her how he felt. To make her feel it, too.

"Mulder, you don't have to do this," she whispered, as he pushed the coat from her shoulders and pulled her harder against him. "This isn't why I came here."

He wished it had been.

"I know," he mumbled against her throat and pulled up the sweater that she was wearing to expose the white flesh of her taut midriff. Mulder knelt down and pressed hot kisses into Scully's abdomen, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist.

"Mulder, don't," Scully said, her voice nearly breathless with pain and desire. "I don't want to make things more complicated than they already are. I don't want to make this harder than it has to be."

Mulder unfastened the button at the top of Scully's slacks and unzipped the zipper. She'd taken off her nylons as she always did when she went home and she was wearing simple, white cotton underpants underneath them. The purpose of her visit had obviously not been seduction. Women didn't wear underwear like that when they were bent on seducing someone or influencing them.

It made him want her all the more.

She'd placed her hands on his shoulders in some attempt to keep him from her, he thought, but it wasn't going to work. She'd done that every time they'd been together since the first, started to respond and then thought better of it for some obscure ethical point that only she understood. Mulder longed for her to simply come into his arms without regret with no thought of anything but their shared pleasure, just once. He wanted to really be Scully's lover as he had been Diana's the night before. He wanted the guilt that blighted them to go away. They really had nothing to feel guilty about.

Mulder had Scully's slacks down to her feet in a matter of a few seconds, and he placed hot, wet kisses in a trail from her abdomen down to her waist and then lower to the softer flesh of her belly, stopping just above the elastic of her underwear. Scully was still gripping his shoulder with her left hand, but her right had somehow gotten tangled in his hair and he could feel her knees shaking weakly as he stuck his tongue in and out of her navel in promise of things to come.

The bedroom was much too far away at this point. He had to get her to the couch or have her right there on the floor, but he really hadn't vacuumed his carpet in a while and he couldn't vouch for its lack of sunflower seed shells, so he'd try for the couch. Mulder stood up rapidly, wrapping his arms tightly around Scully and managing to get her up in the air and carry her over to the couch, while losing the slacks in the process. Sometimes Scully's small size was a major advantage.

In another few seconds he'd placed her on the couch, in just the spot he'd been lying when she'd entered the apartment just a few moments ago. He could feel the leather was still warm from his body as he placed his hands on either side of her and lowered himself down on top of her.

Maybe it was a creepy guy thing, but he loved lying on top of Scully, whether it was while they were making love, or as he slept in her lap trying not to go into shock because some weirdo plant man had clawed the hell out of him. There was something so infinitely perfect about the way her little body fit against his, the way he could bury himself in her warmth and trust in her infinite goodwill and honesty, that made it so much more than physical for him. It was the ultimate completion. The moment when he knew they were truly together.

He only wondered why she couldn't feel it, too.

He pressed his lips to hers again, and met resistance, but it only took a gentle caress on the back of her neck to make her relax and open her mouth beneath his, allowing his tongue free passage inside her. She tasted right, too. Tasted like only Scully could. Like the nectar the gods drank on Mt. Olympus that once tasted by a mortal man spoiled his taste for anything else forever. Or killed him.

At this point Mulder didn't care. He had to have more of her.

Greedily he ran his hands up under her sweater, cupping her breasts, feeling the nipples harden against his fingers as he drank more deeply from her mouth. Feeling her respond, her arms going around him, clinging to him like a drowning woman to a life preserver.

He was rock hard against her thighs. Scully always made him so hard so fast he wondered that he didn't pass out, with all the blood rushing away from his brain like that. He ground his hips against her through the barrier of their clothing. He wanted her to feel his need, to feel his desire, to feel what she did to him. He wondered why she couldn't see it for what it was. How could she not know that she was the only one with the power to do this. The only one that made him instantly ready, instantly mad with the desire to be inside her, to be a part of her, if only fleetingly.

Very reluctantly he pulled himself away from her, broke the contact of their bodies, so he could remove the remaining barrier of their clothing. Pulling off his own T-shirt over his head, he grabbed the bottom of Scully's sweater, only to find himself wrestling her for it.

"

No, Mulder, we shouldn't be doing this," Scully told him trying to bat his hands away from her sweater. "What if Diana finds out? She'll be terribly hurt."

"How is she going to find out? Are you planning on telling her?" Mulder asked, getting the sweater up and over Scully's head as she stared at him in disbelief.

"Mulder you've only just gotten back together and you're-you're-" Scully began, as he tossed her sweater aside and reached behind her to unfasten her bra. She flailed a bit like someone trying to shoo away a pesky mosquito, but she could do nothing about his hands in the middle of her back. The bra soon joined her sweater on the floor.

Mulder began unbuttoning his jeans. "You're doing this with me.

You're-.you're-. cheating on her!"

Mulder stopped what he was doing in utter amazement.

"I'm what?" he asked, his throat closing up until he choked it out, in something very much like horror.

"You're cheating on your girlfriend-" Scully said, not really able to manage a righteous tone, but it did come out very earnest.

"On-.on- your lover-.with-with me. And I don't do things like that. I know that people do them. But I don't do them. I- I won't help you cheat on her. I won't hurt her. It's-. it's wrong."

Mulder was angry. He was so angry that for the first time in his life, he thought he might actually be able to see red. Red like the flames of Hell itself, engulfing Scully. He tore down his zipper and immediately divested himself of jeans and boxers in one jerking motion. Then he reached out and grabbed his partner roughly by the upper arms. He had to have her full attention before she spouted any more nonsense and forced him to kill her and then himself.

"I'm cheating on her. On her. Diana Fowley. I'm cheating-.on her- with you. Is that what you're trying to tell me, Scully, because I can't quite believe it?"

"Of course that's what I'm saying, Mulder," she sputtered. "Have you lost your mind?"

"I must have because I just thought I heard you say I was cheating on Diana. With you."

Scully was angry, herself, now. He saw the sparks begin in the

depths of her sorrowful blue eyes.

"What about my logic is escaping you," Scully said snappishly. "What is it about men that causes the concept of cheating to elude them?"

"I don't think I'm the one whose missing the fundamental concept, here, Scully," Mulder snapped back. "Precisely how could I possibly be cheating on Diana with you?"

"She's your lover, isn't she?" Scully cried in exasperation. "She said you were together last night. She showed me the mark you made on her neck. She told me how much she loves you and how you love her. She told me how good you were together and how she was going to make you happy again. She-I mean, what more do you want? What more does there have to be before you get it?"

"What more does there have to be before you get it, Scully," Mulder said, trying really hard not to cry. He pulled her tightly into his arms, and held her close against him, until some of the angry stiffness eased from her muscles and she just let him hold her. "What makes Diana my lover and you-. I don't know? What are you in this little scenario you've built for yourself?"

"I don't know," Scully sighed. "The other woman, I guess. I think that's what you're trying to make me. Diana seems to think that's what I am, or she wouldn't have warned me away."

"And how are you the other woman?" Mulder asked softly, holding her to him so tightly that he hoped it would help ease the pain he felt like a hole in the middle of his chest. That maybe by holding her to him she could fill a part of it back up with part of herself. Some part she'd be willing to give him.

"Well, you love her, don't you?" Scully looked up at him. "She said that you do. That you're in love."

"

And how does she know we're in love, Scully?" he asked.

"She really didn't go into it in that great detail, Mulder," Scully replied with a sigh. "She said that you'd made love, and I saw the mark on her neck. She said she spent the night. She said you love her, so I suppose you must have said so. How does anyone know those things?"

"And-and-think carefully, Scully- which one of those things that you are so sure happened last night with Diana, hadn't happened before that with me and you." Mulder placed his hand under her chin and made her look up into his face. "I'm not cheating on Diana with you, Scully. Last night, I cheated on you with her."

He waited and watched her face, hoping his words would sink in.

Hoping they'd make some kind of impression.

"But- but-" Scully sputtered in consternation at his bizarre twisting of extant facts to make them seem like logic. "But you can't cheat on me, Mulder. "I'm- I'm not your girlfriend."

"Really?" he asked. "Have we made love, Scully?"

"You know we've been together, Mulder," she replied intending to go on, but he interrupted.

"Have we spent the night?"

"You know we have."

"Have I told you that I love you?"

"Yes, but.."

"No buts. Have I told you that I love you?" he said, looking at her intently, trying to see her heart through the windows of her eyes.

"Yes, you have, but you-"

Mulder placed his finger on her lips.

"Shhh. Please listen to me, Scully. Please think carefully about what I'm saying," he told her. "What's different? Name one thing that's different between you and me and Diana and me that makes her my lover and you, I don't know, you not my lover, I guess. What's different? Obviously not the sex. Obviously not the sleeping together. Not the words. What, then? What makes her more important than the woman I've been with for the past six years?"

"You haven't been with me for six years, Mulder," Scully said.

"Ok, five, then," Mulder said. "Because since you came back from your abduction, in every important way I have been. Maybe we only started having sex a few months ago, but that doesn't mean that we haven't been together all this time. What is different that makes this- that makes us cheating and me and Diana- legitimate or something."

Scully thought a minute.

"You can't think of a reason, can you?"

"I can. I just have to figure out how to explain it to you," Scully said thoughtfully. "There is a difference, Mulder. A big one."

"Really, well lay it on me, Scully," he said, anger making him flippant. Why wouldn't she just look at him? Why wouldn't she see how much she meant to him? "I'm dying to hear it."

"The difference is in expectation, Mulder," Scully said. "I know it's not the tangible evidence you're used to hearing me demand, but this isn't about proving the existence of Big Blue, or the Jersey Devil, or Bigfoot. This is about someone's life and their feelings.

"When I stumbled in here that first night we-that night after that awful date with Rob, I was only expecting to have a little cry and then go home like normal. That isn't how it happened, it turns out. But that wasn't what I was expecting.

"When you went out with Diana, you knew that she wanted something from you, or if you didn't, I'm sure she made it pretty clear during the course of the evening. She's a forceful woman used to getting what she wants. And you went with it Mulder. You made love with her. You affirmed her expectations. You- you essentially promised her something. You made a commitment.

"That was never what it was with us. I don't remember asking anything of you. I don't remember promising anything. It wasn't about that."

"No it wasn't," Mulder said. "It was about so much more than that, wasn't it? I know that you never would have done it if you hadn't been half out of your mind with grief, but I was actually grateful that it made you finally do something, to act in some way instead of freezing yourself down to nothing inside. And that you reached out to me, do you have any idea what that meant to me, Scully? Do you have any idea at all?"

"I didn't want to hurt you, Mulder," she said, running her hand along the plane of his cheek, feeling his rough evening beard against her smooth palm.

"Don't you know that it doesn't matter how much you hurt me?" he asked. "That it only matters that it's you? I don't care what you do as long as you're with me."

"But I'm not with you, Mulder," Scully said. "That's what I've been saying the whole time. I'm not with you. I haven't been with you.

That wasn't what it was with us. It was just-us. Only with sex. And some weird random crying. The expectations weren't there because we already knew what we were getting. We already knew what we were. There were no romantic expectations. I wasn't planning any weddings in my head, and Diana is. That's the difference, Mulder. Hope.

Diana's hoping for something and I'm not. Do you really want to hurt and disappoint her? Especially when she's trying so hard to get you the X-Files back?"

"And you're not hoping because?" Mulder asked, and watched Scully's blighted soul through her eyes. So much pain, so much sadness, he knew what her answer was going to be before she said it.

"I've given it up, Mulder," Scully replied. "It's just no use, and it sets you up to get hurt. I'm not hoping for anything any more. But I'm working very hard to get things done. Things that are worth something. Don't think that I've ever thought this.. that we- that what we've been doing wasn't worth something. Because it wouldn't be true. I'd never feel that way. Sometimes it was the only thing that mattered to me. It was only the thought that I might somehow disappoint you or let you down that made me get out of bed in the morning. Don't ever think that you don't matter to me, Mulder because it would be the worst kind of lie."

Mulder crushed Scully against him in a passionate embrace, his mouth covering hers, as if trying to breathe the life back into her as he had in the frozen mothership in the Antarctic. This was what it was supposed to be. This feeling that welled up inside him until he didn't think he could take it. Until feeling one more thing made him want to scream. Until all he could do was touch her, until to not touch her meant he'd die of a broken heart.

And he knew she felt something. She'd just said so. She wasn't empty, no matter how hard she tried to give everything up. No matter how hard she tried to give him up. The connection was too strong. The bond that six years of hell and pain and fear and trust had forged between them unbreakable. No matter how hard they tried to break it. It would withstand all the Ed Jerses, the Eddie Van Blundhts, the Diana Fowleys of the world. She had to know that too.

Mulder lowered her back down onto the couch. He had her panties off in the next second, and in the second after that had buried himself inside her.

And she was warm, and tight, and wet and everything he'd ever wanted. Everything he'd never known enough to want. The alternative had been clearly presented the night before. The black and white pragmatic union of like and like versus the Technicolor of emotion and pain and heights of love and desire that was Mulder and Scully.

He moved inside her as she held him tightly against her warmth. Her tiny, lithe body fit against him in ways that made everyone else seem bulky and coarse, that made even a beauty like Diana seem like an ox standing next to a delicate greyhound. He couldn't stop kissing her, or running his hands over her silken skin, drawing patterns like a blind man attempting to discover the typewriting on a piece of paper.

And Scully was doing the same, as if she wanted to memorize every part of him as he did her. As if- Mulder thrust spasmodically into Scully as the thought crushed him under its weight. As if she was getting ready to leave him forever. He looked at her face in panic, and saw that she was crying again, silently, her eyes closed tightly as she clutched him to her with desperate arms.

It made Mulder blazingly angry again. And terrified, and mad with love for this woman who felt she had to give up everything she cared about to be good. She'd had so much taken from her unjustly. How could God or anyone ask anything more of her? She'd paid and paid already.

Mulder slammed himself into her harder and harder, drawing gasps and tiny cries from her, though she didn't open her eyes. He wanted her to open them. To see him. To be aware of the power of this act to unite them, to bring them closer than they were already. He wondered at her ability to miss such an important opportunity. It was unlike Scully to overlook anything important.

He was angry, but that didn't mean he could no longer feel the exquisite envelopment of his cock as he withdrew and then slammed back into Scully's heated depths. He was getting close, and she was still whimpering slightly and clutching at him, raising her hips to meet his thrusts no matter how hard he slammed them together. He had no way of gauging how close she was to release until suddenly it was happening, and her muscles were clenching and unclenching as she moaned out his name in ecstasy.

It made him lose his mind, and any remaining control he had over the rest of his body. Spasmodically, he plowed into Scully and came until he thought he actually was going to pass out from lack of oxygen to his brain. He collapsed on top of her, panting and spent, and Scully weakly wrapped her warm arms about him and held him close, still trembling from her own release.

He was very nearly asleep, his cock still deep inside her when Scully kissed him on the forehead and whispered, "Oh God, Mulder, we shouldn't have done this."

He pretended he hadn't heard her.

She was so wrong.

And I know that when she thinks of me  
She thinks of me as "Him"  
But unlike me she don't work off her frustration  
In the gym

He almost felt guilty meeting Diana at the refurbished X-Files office after trying again with Scully the night before. And it hurt him that it was just - almost.

He should feel totally fucking guilty because he and Scully meant everything. But he didn't . Scully still didn't get it. After all he'd tried to show her. After everything that had happened to them. All he'd done. She still didn't understand how he felt about her. She still needed him to prove it somehow, and he didn't know how he could do that.

They'd made love again, with dawn just peeking through the blinds of his living room windows, gently this time, slowly and sensuously, and had both fallen back asleep again in the warm aftermath. Mulder had awakened alone on his couch, an afghan carefully pulled up over him to keep the chill away. It couldn't do anything for the one that had lodged itself firmly in the middle of his chest, unfortunately.

A scaldingly hot shower and a shave didn't do much to make him feel more human, either. He didn't think he was any more.

"Hey, Lover," Diana said throatily, reaching up to kiss his cheek and then place her tongue wetly inside his ear. She removed it and whispered, "I've got some great news, want to hear it?"

"Sure," he replied, putting an arm around her even as he wished it was Scully who was doing that. Of course Scully couldn't have reached his ear without some help, but that didn't change anything.

"I've spoken again with the advisory panel and also with A.D. Kersh. He's agreed to relinquish his responsibility over you and permit your request for a transfer back to the X-Files under my supervision. You can have them back, Fox! If only you'll pretend to be a good boy for just a little while."

Diana hugged him enthusiastically, rubbing her body against him sensuously at the same time. It was nice and annoying all at once because he wished it was someone else.

"What about Scully?" he asked.

"You have to understand, Fox," Diana began. "There's no way I could possibly get you both back. She was originally assigned to debunk your work, to prove it was invalid. Instead you both proved it was. She did good work. So did you, but together you ran to excess. Surely you can see that? They let you stay partners because they knew you wouldn't be able to get away with that stuff over in Domestic Terrorism, or under Kersh. That's why they put you there. They'd never let you both come back. At least not together, and not right now.

"I know how much you hate it, but you have to face political reality. You can't have both Scully and the X-Files. Especially not the insane way she's been behaving lately," Diana finished. "And hasn't all of this always been about the work?"

Mulder thought about that for a minute. Maybe the work was what it had been about at first. But somehow along the way it had become about Samantha, and then about Scully, about their abductions and what had happened and exposing the people who did it and revenge. That's what it had been about for the past five years at least. Years since Diana had gone away.

Diana didn't know. She hadn't been through it. To her, it was still about the work. Still about the vision of solving the cases that remained unsolved, not about some conspiracy or some one-man quest to prove everything was out to fuck you over.

Mulder found himself in an odd position. When he was with Scully, he remembered what they'd been through. When he was with Diana, he remembered his idealistic vision of what the X-Files was meant to accomplish. He wasn't certain how he was going to reconcile the two, or if that was even possible. But he knew he had to decide something, and quickly.

"You said something about a transfer?" he asked, trying to sort it out while he talked.

"Yes, you have to file for one," Diana told him. "I've brought the papers with me, and it's all approved, providing you agree to accept me as department head, though we both know that won't really be the case, and providing that you understand that you're back only on a probationary basis. And it will be only according to my and Spender's reports as to whether you remain assigned to the X-Files division."

"If it's up to Spender, I might as well forget it," Mulder said.

"Jeffrey Spender may be an ass-kissing, weaselly little toad, but he can't lie in his reports. We'll be filing them, too. If he goes against us too many times, it will look bad for him. He's too smart for that." Diana assured him.

"What about Scully?" Mulder asked.

"She's a brilliant pathologist, Fox," Diana told him, placing a hand on his arm reassuringly. "You know she'll have more work than she can handle. They'll put her in the labs or maybe assign her a new partner if she wants to stay a field agent. She had rather a brilliant career going there for a while, from what I understand. And her work with you has been solid. People recognize that even when they don't want to. It's just together that you're poison.

"Scully will be all right. She'll take care of herself. She knows how."

"I don't know if she does," Mulder said. "I don't know if she does any more."

"All the more reason for you to get away from each other, then," Diana said. "You're slowly destroying one another personally and professionally, Fox. This exclusive world you've built around the X-Files and your partnership just isn't normal. I know that you're not lovers, yet everyone acts like you're married to one another.

Even your superiors have been tricked into treating you that way even when they were the ones that assigned you to one another in the first place. Can't you see it?

"This odd relationship the two of you have has cut you off from everyone else in your lives. It's not right. I understand that you haven't been out on a date in years, and from what I hear, neither had Scully until a few months ago."

"No, she did. She went out with a guy named Jerse, it's in the X-Files," Mulder mumbled bitterly. "Or at least it was."

"Let it go, Fox," Diana said. "Let her go. It will be better for both of you."

"But I don't trust anyone else, Diana," Mulder told her. "I'm not even sure that I trust you."

"Then send her your pathology work," Diana told him. "I've been given our first assignment. There's nothing there that says we can't call on Agent Scully or anyone we like to do our labwork for us. Then you know it will be right. And she won't be completely cut off.

"

You can still be friends, Fox. I'm not telling you you have to throw her away like an unwanted piece of paper. I'm just saying you need to untangle yourselves from one another. Get yourselves out of this sick dependence you've created.

"I mean, you have a chance for a life now. I thought we'd agreed on that. Give Scully the same chance."

Mulder looked at Diana's sincere, pleading eyes. He knew that she wanted what was best for him. And she was trying to be fair to Scully, too. He could see that. And she wanted him in a way that Scully, if she even felt the slightest hint of, couldn't admit to herself. And he did have a chance at a life. With Diana. Because Scully was never going to grant him that kind of a chance, no matter what he did.

He knew that Diana loved him, and loved him sincerely for himself.

He knew that he loved Scully to the point of insanity.

And insanity wasn't anything to give anyone.

Maybe if he acted normal for long enough, he could actually be normal.

Maybe it was worth a try. And maybe it could mean the X-Files back with him and eventually with Scully, too. After she'd had a chance to recreate her life along more normal lines as well.

"Where are the transfer papers?" he asked. And Diana placed them on the desk in front of him and he signed them.

"And the first assignment?"

"There are some scandalous doings up in Idaho, Fox," Diana told him, handing him a thick file with a merry twinkle in her dark eyes. "Real cloak and dagger stuff near Idaho National Energy and Engineering Laboratory. Lots of UFO's, lots of lost time, lots of unexplained phenomena, and a terrorist group claiming to be backed by little grey men. It's a real-life undercover assignment for you and me while Spender does the research back here. It's going to take some time, but we have a real chance to uncover some major information."

"How much time?"

"Months for sure," Diana told him. "Maybe as long as a year. It all depends on how quickly we can establish our sources and what we can find out once we get up there."

"You said undercover," Mulder asked.

"Yes," Diana replied. "We have fake identities established. You and I are William and Diana Martin. We're occupational psychologists doing a study on how top secret security work affects the workers. Lots of interviewing, lots of questions, lots of on-site work at the Lab."

"William and Diana Martin, we're married?" Mulder asked.

"That won't be so hard to pretend, will it?" Diana asked.

"No," Mulder told her. "But is it necessary?"

"It gives us a lot better explanation as to why we'll be together so much during off hours and also lets us cover one another up there. We won't have other backup." Diana explained. "And while the Bureau doesn't have to know about how convenient this is on a personal level, living together wasn't something we'd explored in our relationship before. This will give us some no-strings opportunity to play house a little. Without all the fuss of actually moving in together. We'll still have all our things in our own places here when we get back. Then we can decide if it's something we want to continue, or if we need to cool it off again for a while. I'm not here to pressure you, Fox. I want you to know that.

"I know you've been through hell the past six years. I've seen some of my own. But isn't it time we moved on with our lives and made it so we're living toward something instead of running away from the past. We both have futures ahead of us. Wouldn't it be nice to have them together?"

"It makes a lot of sense, Diana," Mulder said. And it did. In all the ways the he and Scully didn't. It made sense.

"And it will make a lot of happiness, too, Fox," Diana said, coming into his arms. "You'll see."

Recriminations fester and the past can never change  
A woman's expectations run from both ends of the range  
Once she woke with untamed lovers' face between her legs  
Now he's cooled and stifled and it's she who has to beg.

Scully wasn't sure why she was doing it, even as she was putting her key inside the lock on apartment 42. Things had gotten entirely out of hand the night before from her doing precisely the same thing, but it was earlier today. And maybe Fowley would be there. She had every reason to be.

When she was done talking to him, she was going to leave the key.

She wasn't going to need it any more.

She scraped it in the lock, her hands were shaking a little too much to make it easy. Just as she was getting ready to turn it, it turned by itself and Mulder pulled the door open to look out at her. He didn't say anything, just stepped back so that she could come inside. And she did, though what she really wanted to do was drop the key onto the polished wood floor of his hallway and run in the other direction as fast as her legs could take her. But she knew that then Mulder would only run after her. Like she was Pavlov ringing a bell and it was all he could do. It would make a nasty scene. It would bother people.

There'd been too many confrontations in this hallway already. She wasn't about to force another one.

It could be inside. Nice and quiet and neat and no one but them the wiser.

Scully fought to calm her shaking and turned a too bright smile on her ex-partner. "Well, Mulder," she said too brightly. "I guess you're wondering why I'm here. Why I keep turning up just like the proverbial bad penny?"

"I just want to know why I woke up alone this morning," he said, wiping the smile from her face and killing the next part of her carefully rehearsed speech dead in her throat.

Scully coughed.

"But you didn't come here to tell me that, did you?" he said. "I can see it on your face. You came here to tell me some more of the crap you were telling me last night. Well, you can save your breath, Scully. It was wrong then, and it isn't any righter now."

"I came here to give you this back," she said holding out the key to his apartment. "I assume you're taking the fish with you to Idaho."

"What?" he asked.

"The fish. To Idaho," Scully said very slowly. "That is where your new assignment is, isn't it? Or is it at Pacific Northwest National Lab instead? It's at one of the ones out there."

"H-how did you find out?" he asked.

"Kersh called me and asked me what I wanted to do," Scully said.

"Now that you were back on the X-Files. He wanted to know if I wanted another partner, or if I was going back to Quantico, or if I would rather work at the Path lab as a, this is how he phrased it, "sort of freelance consultant" on difficult cases. He said I'd earned my choice."

"I was going to tell you myself, Scully," he said. "I had no idea it would all happen so quickly. I didn't think-"

"I'm sure you didn't," Scully told him. "Nor should you have. The X-Files are yours, Mulder. You have to do what you have to do to get them back. Don't think I blame you for it. I don't. In fact, if you remember, it's what I told you you had to do. It's nice that you listened to me for once."

"I-I didn't listen to you, Scully," Mulder said, knowing that his decision had largely been influenced by his inability to hope that anything would ever come out right for them. "I just came to the same conclusion, that's all."

"Well, I don't suppose you could ever admit I was right about anything," Scully said, looking up at his guarded, still face. She wanted so badly to touch him, to make his face look like something, instead of so blank.

They stood there awkwardly for a long minute. This wasn't what Scully had come there for. Not in the slightest. She had to do something to fix things between them, at least a little before he went away for good. She groped blindly for something, anything to say.

"So, since you've made the commitment and requested the transfer, we're officially not partners anymore, right?"

"I guess not," Mulder said, his face even more guarded than before. Scully didn't want it to be like this. She needed him to know she was happy for him. She needed him to know that she approved. That she wanted him to have the X-Files back. That she understood how much he needed it. How much a part of him they were.

"And everything's settled between you and Diana, too, right? You'll

be living together when you go up to Idaho."

"Yes," he said, looking pointedly at the door, like he wanted her to use it. Well she wasn't going to just yet. Not until she showed him just how much she wasn't angry with him.

"But she's not here yet, is she?"

"No," Mulder replied, looking at her again, with a speculative frown and a hefty dose of incredulity.

"So, I guess that removes basically any objection anyone could make then, doesn't it?" Scully said. She gave him a tentative smile, trying to make it seductive. "So Mulder, want one for the road? A little warm goodbye from your ex-partner?" She smiled suggestively, rather like he usually did to her. It was strange. It was a totally strange and bad position to be in, but she did it anyway. She put herself right out there and waited to see what he'd do.

Mulder just looked at her.

"Have you totally lost your mind?" he said. "Are you seriously suggesting what I think you are? Are you turning into- are you turning us into- into that? One for the fucking road?"

"I didn't know you felt that way. I'm sorry I suggested it," Scully said, turning around very quickly and heading for the door.

"Scully, what do you think I just said? Do you have any idea why I'm angry with you?" he asked, moving toward her and taking the doorhandle in his own hand to prevent her turning it.

"It doesn't matter. Forget I said anything," she told him, looking pointedly at his hand on the doorknob.

"It doesn't matter. Is that how you really feel?" he asked. "Is it? Because it's important that I know."

"Because it's going to weigh into your decision-making process?" Scully asked, still looking at his hand and not his face, her hair falling forward, hiding her own expression from his view.

"Yes," he said in a choked voice, barely able to get it out.

"I don't want to play that game," Scully told him, looking up at last to meet his green-gold eyes. "No one wins at that game. You have to do what you want, Mulder. Not what someone else wants you to do. It wouldn't be right for me to try to influence you one way or the other. What I want or don't want isn't important."

"Why do you always do this?" he asked angrily. "What do you want, Scully? Why isn't what you want as important as what I want?"

"It just isn't," Scully told him. "It isn't as important to me."

"Why not?"

She didn't answer. She couldn't answer and not cry. So she concentrated all her efforts on not crying instead. That was important. She couldn't show him her weakness. She'd already shown enough of that by her suggestion. And she hadn't expected him to reject her. At least not until they'd- Not until they'd done what? Made love? Fucked? Something in-between the two? Because Scully didn't really know what they had been doing. She didn't really know what it was. She only knew how she felt about it, about him. She really hadn't the slightest clue about how he really felt. He'd never tell her, just some silly "I love you" that meant nothing more than one of his flip marriage proposals or his speculations about what kind of underwear she might be wearing when he talked to her over the phone.

"Why not, Scully?" he asked, moving his hand from the doorknob to her arm, just above the elbow. He put the other one on the other side in the same place.

He was touching her. She closed her eyes to try to remember what it felt like, to imprint the feel of his hands upon her forever. She wouldn't be feeling his touch again.

"I-." She began and then stopped.

"You what?"

"I-. I shouldn't want things," she finished quickly and opened her eyes to look at him.

"I just can't believe this. Not again," Mulder smiled a mirthless smile. "Why shouldn't you? Tell me that, please?"

"It- it places obligations on other people," Scully said. "People try to give you the things you want. So- if you never tell them what you want, then they don't feel obligated and they can be happy. They can concentrate on getting things that they want instead of trying to get things for you."

"If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be?" Mulder

asked.

"I'm not really in the mood for hypothetical questions right now," Scully told him.

"Humor me," he replied seriously, giving her a small shake to show her he was serious. "Anything. What would you want?"

"This is stupid."

"Do it anyway." Mulder shook her again.

"A baby," Scully blurted out, and then ashamed, tried to clap her hands over her mouth, but Mulder's hands on her arms prevented the movement.

And the next thing she knew he'd crushed her to his chest, holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe.

"You see, you see why I shouldn't tell you," she said, into the broad expanse of Mulder facing her, not realizing her voice was a sob until it came out of her mouth. "Now you feel sorry for me, and you shouldn't. I'm okay with it, really, Mulder. I'm okay."

"And I'm fucking Mother Theresa," he said and raised her lips to his, with one hand locked under her chin and the other crushing her against his hard body until she knew she'd remember what he felt like forever.

"No," she said weakly, when he let her up for air. "No, not like this."

But it was really far too late for her to protest, he'd already carried her to his bedroom.

But Scully didn't want a pity-fuck. She already knew he'd made his commitment. He'd chosen Fowley, that could be the only reason for his earlier rejection. She pressed her hands flat against his unyielding chest.

"No," she said weakly, as he ran his hands up under her skirt and pulled down her underwear. Why hadn't she worn pants? Why had she decided it was ok to skip the nylons because July was so damned hot? Why hadn't she changed before she'd gone over to his apartment to have this stupid conversation?

But then Mulder stopped kissing her and buried his face between her legs instead, fingers plunging deep into her aching body, guaranteed to work their magic.

Maybe that was how he planned to remain faithful to Fowley. Bringing her to climax while remaining aloof himself.

"No, Mulder," she said, trying to squirm away from him, but he pressed his face into her groin until she'd backed herself right up to the headboard and had nowhere else to run. And, of course, that was when he chose to use that swirly thing he'd learned from Phoebe. Scully grabbed onto the headboard and hung on for dear life. She tried not to come, really she did, but while the spirit was more than willing - it was determined - the flesh was very weak, indeed. She just couldn't stop herself from responding to him, no matter how much she wished she could.

She heard someone crying "no" but it wasn't until she'd come back to herself, that she realized

it was her. And that she was weeping - like a faucet.

"It's all right, baby," Mulder was murmuring into her hair somehow now. "It's all right."

He was holding her. He was holding her close after having forced her to come when she didn't want to. When she'd only wanted to get up and leave because he'd already decided. When she'd wanted to keep her last shred of dignity at least.

But now he'd taken that as well. The only thing she'd had left, seeing he'd chosen Fowley and didn't want her any more. And then he'd made her come anyway, out of pity, and she hadn't been able to stop herself. Or him. Scully felt like dirt. Like the weakest creature that had ever not evolved a backbone. She tried to get her sobbing under control, but she couldn't.

"Don't," Mulder murmured into her hair. "Don't, Scully. Please."

"Jus-just let go of me- Mulder," she managed between the sobs that were wracking her body until she felt like she would crack in two.

"I can't," Mulder said, kissing the top of her head as he always did when he wanted to calm her. "I don't remember how. I- I've held on so long now. I can't let you go, Scully. You can't leave me. You can't even die."

"Mulder-you're-. not making-.any sense," with a mighty effort of will, Scully began to get herself under control. She couldn't believe how she'd allowed herself to lose it like that because Mulder made a decision she didn't like. It was his life. He was allowed to do what he wanted. If he wanted to go with Fowley, he should go. She should be glad for him.

He had a chance to be happy now. He could never have that with her.

He could only pity her, pathetic, broken thing that she was.

But Scully knew she wasn't only that. She was still useful. Just not to Mulder. Just not in making him happy.

"But I am making sense, Scully," he told her. "The best kind of sense." Mulder started undressing her the rest of the way, removing what remained of their clothing. And Scully was horribly angry to find that she was helping him. Tugging at his belt and pulling his shirt out of his jeans. Running her hands over his lean muscled body just as he ran his over her.

Why did it have to be like this? That they could do this together, so perfectly, when everything else was a shambles.

It was so typical of them, really. They could be at one another's throats for any number of reasons personal and professional, yet if they ever needed one another, for anything, they worked together like a well-oiled machine, or rather, like two parts of the same machine, two cogs with grooves perfectly cut one for the other. Or rather, hers were cut to fit to only his, six long years of wear had stripped and polished them down so that only he could complete her. But, apparently, it wasn't the same way for him.

She wouldn't think about that now. Like Scarlett O'Hara, another Irishwoman who chose herself the wrong man. She'd let him walk out the door and tell her he didn't give a damn. But not right now. And the fact was, she knew that Mulder did give a damn, and that's what made it hurt even more.

That along with the fact that she wasn't a shallow bitch like Scarlett O'Hara.

But she knew she'd hurt Mulder, too. By not being what he'd wanted, though she'd never had a clear idea of what that was. And Diana certainly seemed to. Better to leave him to her, then. It was the best thing she could do for him.

He could be happy now.

Without her.

they sure as hell had amply proved that he couldn't be happy with her.

And she- God, she was losing him.

Scully tried hard not to cry again as the now-naked Mulder pulled her down onto his lap, bringing them together in completion that was not.

It couldn't be, because he was no longer hers. If he ever had been. The connection was severed, even if she could still feel it like a phantom limb. They weren't partners now. Or lovers. Or anything to one another. And yet here they were, and it was perfect, like every time.

It felt perfect.

It was sin. It was corrupt. He belonged heart and body and mind and commitment to someone else. Yet Scully could still feel his soul, shining down into hers in the darkness and hers wrapping and entwining with it, as their bodies joined almost as an afterthought.

That's what it felt like to her. That's what it always felt like at the time. But then she'd get to thinking about it and looking for the evidence as she always did and it would seem so foolish in light of the facts that she'd stop believing in it. Until it happened again.

Mulder was holding her tightly and raising himself up to meet her as she moved up and down on his lap. She had her arms braced on his shoulders and could feel the muscles there tightening and supporting her as she rode him to completion. She loved him so much, she couldn't look at his face. She turned her head and shut her eyes against the tears she felt welling up there despite her will against them.

"Scully," he whispered into her neck. "Look at me."

She couldn't do that. It would kill her. She'd turn to stone as if she'd looked into the eyes of the Gorgon. She weakly shook her head and clenched her muscles as she drove him deep inside her to distract him from what he'd asked for.

He moaned, and she knew he appreciated her effort, but it didn't stop him.

Mulder reached up and took her head between his hands. He turned her face toward his and she could feel his thumbs brushing at the tears as they squeezed out under her eyelids and ran down her cheeks. Scully couldn't open her eyes, but she felt Mulder's lips brushing her face and she leaned toward him, brushing her breasts against him, wanting every bit of contact now, while she still could have it.

That motion brought them even closer together, rubbing her sensitive clitoris against him somehow differently than before. And Scully could feel her body building toward orgasm, even as her heart was bursting with love and grief. She could feel the tension building in Mulder, too. He seemed harder now, bigger than ever, and plunged deeper inside her with every stroke.

They were both so close, and so far away.

"Scully, look at me, please," Mulder gasped out. "Please, Scully, I need you to be with me."

Scully squeezed her eyes shut tighter. "I can't," she whispered. "I can't look. I can't be-"

"Please, Scully," he pleaded. "I love you. I need you so much."'

Scully opened her eyes and shattered into a million pieces. She knew she'd never be able to put them all back into any kind of order again. Not after looking into his eyes, so filled with need and desire. The last small part of herself that she'd kept aside, refused to let anyone touch because it hurt too much had finally been given. Given at the moment it was the most hopeless, the surest moment to destroy her.

But she couldn't regret it. She loved him too much for that. Let him kill her. It wouldn't matter. It couldn't when she loved him like that.

"Mulder," she said, because his name was all she could say. It was a prayer, a plea, an affirmation all in one.

"I love you," he breathed again, and she could feel him begin to shudder with the force of his orgasm.

Scully kissed him and pulled him deep inside her until she couldn't tell where he ended and she began. They were together, complete. She wished for Mulder's memory. How beautiful to be able to recall it all in perfect detail, even if the pain also had to be remembered. She wanted always to know the feel of his skin against hers. The touch of his hands and his arms around her. The salt taste of his sweat and of the tears that stained his face. The sound of his breathing and his voice murmuring her name again and again.

"Please, Scully," he said at last, his lips brushing the sensitive skin of her throat. "Please tell me that you understand. That you know now. That you get it."

"What, Mulder?" she asked, sorry that he'd spoiled the peace and beauty of the moment so soon with his words. Talking meant leaving soon. She knew that. She never wanted to leave him, but his words were sure to drive her away as they always did.

"Tell me that you understand," he begged. She knew it meant a great deal to him, whatever it was. She contemplated lying and saying she did.

"That I understand what, Mulder?" she asked. She could never lie to him. "What are you talking about?"

He was getting angry now, he pushed at her hips to unjoin their bodies.

"I just wonder why you won't see it. I know you could see it. But you don't want to. You've never wanted to. And I've always wondered why. Will you tell me why?" he demanded.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Scully said earnestly. "I really don't. It's like you talk in symbols where the words have hidden meanings that I don't understand, Mulder. It's like the words we use have different meanings to each of us. I can say black, and you think it's maroon or something."

"I can't see maroon," Mulder told her. "It's a kind of dark red."

"Fine," Scully said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, knowing her mascara was probably smudging all to hell but not caring. Mulder had seen her naked and covered in green goo a little smeary mascara was no big deal. "What was this about to you? Why did you bring me back here and do what you did? I was leaving. Why didn't you let me leave? You'd told me you wanted me to go. What so suddenly changed your mind?"

"You finally looked at it," Mulder said. "It made me hope you could look at things now."

"I looked at what?" she asked.

"That discovering that you can't have children has devastated you in ways that you didn't even know about. That discovering Emily compounded the problem and that you refused to even look at it until it nearly killed you with grief. You were hurting so much, Scully, and you wouldn't admit it, so no one could help you. You even refused to let your God help you. What could I hope to accomplish?"

"So you brought me back here to help me?" she said.

"No. Why are you doing this?" Mulder was angry now. "You're deliberately misunderstanding me. Why?"

"I'm not deliberately misunderstanding you, Mulder. You're being terribly unclear. What do you mean? Why did you bring me here? Were you suddenly overcome with lust? I don't think so."

"You know it wasn't that."

"So what was it, then?"

"It was-I-"

"What? Spit it out, Mulder," Scully goaded, growing frustrated and angry, herself.

"I-I- I just-"

"Here, let me," Scully snapped. "I just felt sorry for you, Scully. I know how bad you feel about being a dried-up barren Thing. And I wanted to make you feel better about yourself before I left for Idaho."

"And you really think that I see you like that?" Mulder said at last.

"How else could you possibly see me, Mulder? We both know it's true," Scully said with a rueful smile. "You don't have to pretend it's something else. I'm not mad at you. You're just trying to make me feel better. You can't help if it doesn't work."

"How can you possibly say those things about yourself?" he asked. "How could you even think them? You're so good to everyone, Scully. How can you be so good when you feel so bad?"

"I don't feel bad, Mulder," Scully told him. "I usually just don't think about it. I have other, more important things to do than feel sorry for myself, you know."

"That's what it is, then," he said with an exasperated sigh. "Diana was right about that. You've made yourself into a martyr. You refuse even to feel pain because you're so determined to be good for everyone else. Do you think we need your example, Scully? That we're all so corrupt that we need a modern-day Saint to lead us into the light? Even if it's the light of a fucking oncoming train?"

"I don't have to sit here and listen to this," Scully said, moving away from him toward the far side of the bed. She'd get her clothing and leave. He could go to Idaho and rot with the potatoes for all she'd care. Mulder grabbed her arm before she got halfway across the spread. He pulled her down roughly onto the bed beneath him.

"You don't have to sit here, but you'll damn well lie here until I'm done," Mulder said.

"Get off me, Mulder, or I swear I'll-" Scully began, angry as a cat that's accidentally fallen into the fishtank.

"You'll what?" he asked. "Scream? Hurt me? Bring me up on charges? You and I both know you won't. And even if you did- well, you're the pathologist. The forensic evidence is rather against you for an assault charge."

Scully glared at him. He was right, of course. She wasn't injured in any way, and Mulder had at least two bites on his neck and several scratches down his back that could be traced right back to her. And that didn't even begin to count the evidence of him she still had inside her. She'd look like the hysterical teenaged girl that got too drunk at a party, did something she regretted and then cried rape to cover it up. Scully knew rape was a horrible crime and that any charge of it was worth believing, but she also knew that things like this happened all the time, too. And that some people went way too far in attempting to extract their revenge on their former lovers.

Especially lovers who had spurned them.

She had definitely been spurned. Mulder was going to Idaho with Diana Fowley, after all. Well, she'd let him say whatever he had to say. And then she would leave. She wasn't going to give either him or Fowley the satisfaction of some scene or show of temper.

"Are you going to listen now?" Mulder asked her sternly.

"If I do will you let me leave?"

"No, I'm planning to pack you in a trunk and take you to Idaho as my personal sex toy," Mulder replied. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Even Scully could tell he regretted having lost his temper.

"If you really listen, you can do whatever you want."

"Fine," Scully said. "Say what you feel you have to say, then.

"I just-." He began and stopped, his voice giving out. He cleared his throat. "I just want to know why you feel you have to do it? Why do you feel you have to shoulder this huge burden all alone? What makes it necessary for you to never cry, never get really angry, never admit you feel pain, never admit you're afraid? Don't you see that by killing those parts of yourself, or hiding them away so you can be some kind of example, or whatever you think you're being, that you're also killing all the joy, all the fun, all the happiness in your life?

There has to be darkness so we can recognize the light, Scully. Can't you see that by repressing the things you feel are bad, you're killing all the things that are good? Don't you understand that that's what's killing us? That that's what's making this devoid of meaning for you. That us being together has to somehow be bad in this saintly cosmology you've created for yourself?"

"And when, precisely, did I tell you that this was meaningless, Mulder?" she asked, but couldn't get through it without her voice breaking. She turned her face away from him, so he couldn't see that he'd made her cry again.

"You're doing it right now," he said, wrapping his arms about her tightly. "Why, Scully?"

"I don't want you to feel bad, all right?" she said. "You're doing the right thing. I know that. You have such a huge capacity for feeling guilty, Mulder. I don't want to be one more thing you feel guilty about. If martyrdom is my problem, then guilt is yours. You even blame yourself for my abduction, for my cancer. You weren't the one who took me. You weren't the one that made me sick. Yet I've watched you shoulder the blame for that. Isn't it my responsibility to try to bear some of the burden myself? Maybe that's why you're so obsessed with this. I'm cheating you out of your reason to hate yourself."

"So we're both just hopelessly fucked up, then," Mulder said at last.

"I guess so," Scully told him, holding him so tightly in return. "Diana's right. You should listen to her. We're poison for one another, Mulder."

"I won't believe that," Mulder said. "I don't want to believe that."

"I think it might be the only truth we've really uncovered together," Scully said. "After all we've been through. It may be the only one."

"Then why do I love you so much?" Mulder asked, and Scully could feel his hot tears mingling with hers as they ran down her cheek.

"I don't know," she said, stroking her hands over his back to try to ease his pain. "I don't know."

Slit skirts, Jeannie never wears those slit skirts  
And I don't ever wear no ripped shirts  
Can't pretend that growing older never hurts  
Knee pants Jeannie never wears no knee pants  
Have to get so drunk to try a new dance  
So afraid of every new romance

He couldn't believe it. She'd come to see them off.

He'd barely spoken to Scully for the past two weeks. Not since the paperwork had gone through and they'd both cleaned out their desks in the Domestic Terrorism Unit's bullpen.

Not since Scully had accepted the consulting position at the Pathology Lab, keeping her field agent status, so she could fly anywhere on a moment's notice to perform difficult autopsies or lend a needed hand on a big case.

He and Diana were wearing casual clothes. Appropriate attire for a youngish professional couple moving across country to a new job. Scully had on her usual FBI Agent suit. A particularly somber black one that she usually reserved for getting hauled in front of review boards or facing down angry Assistant Directors. It had a long slim jacket and an equally long straight skirt. One that hit Scully mid-shin, not an attractive length for her, really. It only accentuated her lack of height. In that suit and her crisp white blouse Scully looked like nothing more than a sober modern nun, preparing to go out and serve others the charity they didn't deserve. She looked perfect. And perfectly composed.

Mulder wasn't certain he could take it. He could feel his heart stopping in his chest.

"Why Agent Scully, how nice of you to come all the way to Baltimore to see us off," Diana said, coming over to Scully and offering her hand.

Scully took it and shook it firmly but not aggressively.

"You know I wish you both the best," Scully said. Her voice calm and inflected with just the right hopeful tone for the occasion.

"Thank you," Diana said with as much grace as she could manage considering Scully had seen fit to blight their leavetaking. "And we'll keep you apprised of our progress. I know you have more than a passing interest in the X-Files, after all."

"How very kind of you," Scully said. "I'll be very interested in knowing what you discover."

"Well there may end up being some forensics work to be done," Fowley said. "Would you mind consulting with us? If you have the time, of course."

"All you have to do is ask," Scully said. "And make sure that you provide me with complete information. Mulder forgets sometimes."

"I know," said Fowley, with a tight smile. "I've worked with him before, remember?"

"How could I forget," Scully said. "Well, best of luck in finding out what's going on at INEEL."

"Thanks," Diana smiled. "Fox? We should be boarding now."

"In a minute," he said, looking pointedly at his new partner. "Why don't you get in line? I'll be right there."

"Don't take too long," Diana smiled warmly. "Wouldn't want to miss the complementary nuts."

"I won't," Mulder said, and then watched her walk away to join the other passengers from their flight in the boarding line.

"Well," Scully began, and then had to clear her throat before she could continue. "I- I really do hope things go well for you, Mulder. "I-. I know you were angry at me the last time we talked, and that's why I came here today. I didn't want you to leave like that. I don't want you to think I'm angry with you. Or that I don't agree with your decision to go back to the X-Files. I just don't want you to- to hate me, Mulder. Because that's what I think is starting to happen."

"Oh my god," Mulder said, and pulled Scully roughly into his arms. He didn't care if Diana was in the line or on the plane or standing behind him with her sidearm drawn and pointed at his head. He just had to be touching the most important person in his life. "Never. Never that, Scully. Never. I could never, ever hate you. No matter what happens. Don't you know that? Can't you see? Won't you?"

"If you tell me so, Mulder," Scully said into his T-shirt. "I trust you. I believe you. And I believe in you. That's why this is right. That's why it's so important. I just had to let you know that. Before-.before-."

Scully's voice broke, she couldn't go on without embarrassing herself and him in the middle of a crowded airline terminal.

"I love you, Scully," he said into her hair, and she could feel his tears dripping onto her forehead.

"Passengers for Flight 139 Non-stop from Baltimore to Boise, this is your last boarding call," the voice boomed over the loudspeaker behind Mulder.

"Y-you have to go," Scully said, trying to pull away from him. Mulder held her locked against him, clinging like she was his last hope in a world sinking quickly into chaos. "You'll miss your plane."

"It doesn't mean anything, does it?" he asked, into her hair.

"What?"

"That I love you," he replied.

"It can't, Mulder," she said, raising her face to meet his tearshot green-brown eyes. "You can't let it mean anything. It- it's not even an extreme possibility anymore. You've made your choices."

"Then why can't I stop?" he said, almost more to himself than to her.

"You will eventually, Mulder," she said, reaching up to wipe his tears away with her thumbs. "You'll find a way. You always find a way to do anything you have to do."

"I don't know how to be without you, Scully," he said.

"Then you'll learn," she told him trying her best to smile. "You've

got to go now. Everyone else is already gone."

"Tell me you love me, Scully," he said. "You never have. Even if you don't mean it, I just want to hear you say it once."

"Why, Mulder?" Scully smiled through her tears. "It would be pointless now."

"Just say it," he pleaded, fixing her with his whole attention, the whole intensity of his personality, holding her in his regard until her will was no longer her own.

She knew it was wrong. She knew it would only hurt them both. She did it anyway simply because he'd asked.

"I love you, Mulder," Scully said, amazed at how easy it was. At how it didn't kill her immediately. At how she didn't burst into more tears, or flame, or break in two as soon as the words left her lips. "I always have."

"Ask me not to go," he said, still fixing her with those eyes.

Scully had the strength and the decency to pull away this time. "It would be wrong. You're going to miss your plane," she said, pulling away from him in earnest. 

Reluctantly Mulder allowed her to remove herself from his grasp. " 

Go, Mulder, now. Find the truth. You need that much more than you ever needed me."

"You're wrong, Scully," he said. But he turned and began to walk toward the plane. The airline employees were just seeing the last of the other passengers through the gate door.

Scully could not bear to watch him actually get on the airplane.

Quickly she turned and began walking briskly back up the terminal. She couldn't see where she was going with the tears running down her face, but she was able to make out the dark shadows of other pedestrians and so avoid them. She was practically running by the time she got back to the security checkpoint, feet pounding the floor in her two-inch heels, tight skirt catching uncomfortably against her calves despite the slit at the back that was supposed to grant her freedom of movement.

All Scully felt was trapped.

All tight and mummified in a life that held no more interest for her. Everything that had made sense or had mattered to her had just gotten on a plane to Idaho, and she was never going to see him again.

She wanted to run away as fast as she could. But she was stuck tight in a constrictive life that she'd chosen, just as she'd chosen the damned suit that morning.

They'd all made their choices, hadn't they? And there were no second chances.

Slit skirts, slit skirts, Jeannie isn't wearing those  
Slit skirts, slit skirts, she wouldn't dare in those  
Slit skirts, slit skirts, won't be seen dead in those slit skirts  
Romance, romance, why aren't we thinking up romance?  
Why can't we drink it up, true heart romance  
Just need a brief new romance


End file.
